The Circular Logic of 'Electability'

By the fall of 2025 candidates have already declared for the 2026 mid-term elections, and already there are some high profile races. As we continue to plod further into the primary, then general election, pundits will inevitably start pontificating on which candidate is more "electable". Which is a fine topic for the talking heads; how else are you going to program a 24-hour news channel? However, these segments will invariably turn to polling data on voters opinion of the electability of the candidates in the race. After all, how many times can these pundits repeat their opinions and react to their co-panelists well-worn positions? New grist is needed for the political-take mill. There is not all that much salience in the question of electability. In particular, for your average voter the question of candidate electability is circular and incredibly meta. 

Maybe first we should take a step back and define exactly what is meant by electability, however intuitive the term may be. When pollsters are asking if respondents think a candidate is electable they are asking if the respondent thinks a candidate has broad support among voters—is it plausible that this candidate will win at least a plurality of votes cast. Or when they ask which candidate is most electable they are asking respondents to identify which candidate they think has the broadest appeal among voters—there may be multiple electable candidates in a primary race, but the most electable candidate is the candidate which is most likely to win or win by the largest margin.  Importantly what the pollsters are not asking in these questions is which candidate the respondents voted for or planned to vote for. 

One way to answer the electability question would be to put a poll in the field asking respondents to identify which candidate they planned to vote for, the candidate with the most responses is the most electable. Alternatively, pollsters could place a favorably survey in the field. This would identify all the candidates that are electable while also measuring voter enthusiasm which could help determine which candidate is most electable.

To ask voters which candidate they think is most electable is to ask voters to separate their candidate considerations from an evaluation of the preferences of the general electorate. This is just not realistic. People are inclined to think they are rational and well reasoned and so their candidate selection is rational and well reasoned. Furthermore, people want to be a part of a movement that they believe is generally popular and likely to win. This means there is at least some self-motivated reasoning in believing the candidate they support is also the most electable. 

Beyond the self-motivated reasoning, voters are not in a position to make the determination of which candidate is most electable. While an individual voter may have a good intuitive sense of the issues important to their community, there will be implicit biases within that community's preferences no matter how community is defined. In order to mitigate these biases, along with any self-motivated reasoning, one would need an understanding of the demographic data of the makeup of the electorate, voter turnout models, and polling results. It is unreasonable to expect voters to be familiar with and have a good understanding of this data to provide an insightful evaluation of electability. In place of this data voters are responding to signals; signals like name recognition, media coverage, crowd sizes, and fundraising totals. 

Where the logic of electability becomes circular is that media organizations are responding to these very same signals when making programing decisions. Once candidates are in the field and voters have a chance to make initial evaluations the media begins covering the candidates that are ahead in the polls, leading in fundraising, and drawing the largest crowds. At this point, responding to the additional input of media coverage, voters begin to further sort themselves away from the lower performing candidates to the higher performing candidates. When asked "who is most electable" voters will respond with the top performing candidates. Responding to this input the media will cover those candidates more closely, to which voters will respond in kind, and so on. 

This also leads voters t make assumptions about the electorate and candidates that is not relevant to that candidate's ability to perform the duties of the office they are seeking. Lets imagine two nearly identical candidates running for President as Democrats. Both have executive experience at the state level, both generally support the same policies, both speak well publicly and are charming in one-on-one interactions, and neither have scandals in their past. The first candidate is a traditionally attractive, above average height, white, Christian man. The second candidate is a black woman; or a gay man; or is Jewish or Muslim or basically any non-Christian religion; or transgender. Respondents will rarely say that they do not want a candidate with one of these qualities, but that they are not sure the rest of the American people are ready for a President with these qualities. Even though, by any objective measure these two candidates should be equally electable because their relevant qualifications are equal. Of course I recognize we cannot separate racism, sexism, or any of the other -isms from these political considerations but the consideration of electability throws an additional barrier in front of these candidates.

Understanding that people do not want to take time to go to a political rally, donate money, or vote for a candidate they think is ultimately doomed to loose, those candidates are hamstrung from the beginning of the race. Once the media picks up on these signals it will reinforce voter's perceptions and those candidate's unelectability will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Electability is not inherently a silly concept, but the way we talk about it is. Electability is not some stat on the back of each candidates trading card, static and separate from other factors. Electability is what campaign managers, strategists, and candidates are trying to maximize through their campaign strategies. It is a metric that is indirectly moved by direct actions on other aspects of the campaign, like their policy platform. As such, we should not talk about electability directly, but rather we should talk about the other, more relevant, facets of the candidates and their campaigns.

Democrats Need Persuasion, Not Polling

Donald Trump's theory of politics can be boiled down to capturing and controlling media attention. Chris Hayes wrote a book, The Sirens Call, entirely on the political value of attention in a fractured and fragmented media environment. Ezra Klein has also opined on the value of political attention and how Democrats are failing to meet the moment. Early ally and political advisor to Trump, Steve Bannon, erected strategic scaffolding around Trump's pre-existing tendencies in an interview with PBS Frontline when he described using "muzzle velocity" to "flood the zone with shit".  

More than a decade into Trumpian politics the media and Democrats are still struggling to identify an effective response to Trump's domination of attention. It is very difficult to fact-check statements from Trump when each statement is preceded by a lie, contains a lie, is followed by a lie, and presupposes a lie. It is just as difficult to focus on any one controversy or scandal when some other controversy arises halfway through the news cycle of the first. 

One response may be to tie each of Trump's actions together with a common theme, say power and corruption. Keeping this simple framing Democrats would not have to explain a new theory of the case for why any one action taken by the Trump administration is immoral, illegal, or unconstitutional. Simply fold it into the pre-existing theory. Trump hosts a private dinner at his Virginia golf course for the largest investors of his Trump Coin crypto currency? That's corruption! 

Instead what you will hear is, "could you imagine if a Democrat did X, Republicans would lose their minds" or "I'm old enough to remember when Republicans were opposed to Y". This is not effective messaging. What these kind of arguments sound like is an airing of grievance about how unfairly one side has been treated compared to another rather than engaging on the actual merits of an action or policy. In a highly polarized environment, particularly one that is negatively polarized, no one cares about hypocrisy or flip-flopping on issues. These arguments also take time away from propagating a narrative of a corrupt and power-seeking President to explain a hypothetical reaction to a hypothetical policy or what the other side's position used to be. Reagan said, "if you're explaining you're losing". This is not literally true; politicians need to explain why they are running for office, what they hope to accomplish, what their values are, and so on; there is a lot of explaining going on in politics. The sentiment behind Regan's quip is true though, maybe even more so now. I think Reagan is repacking a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet for a modern, political context, "brevity is the soul of wit". Voters have busy lives and do not have the time or  interest in hearing a 20 minute answer on the value of American soft power in the form of food relief through USAID, they want to hear how America will be respected and loved throughout the world due to our humanitarian programs. In a media environment where more people see the clipped segments shared on TikTok, Instagram, and Bluesky than the originally aired interview or podcast, Democrats cannot be wasting time on "If Obama had" or "Republicans used to" talking points.

No, instead of trying to draw attention to each instance of corruption and executive overreach to create an overarching sense that Donald Trump and the Republican party are corrupt and only interested in power, Democrats have instead resorted to focusing narrowly on issues that are the strength of the party. 

Trump floating purchasing Greenland, making Canada the 51st state, and reclaiming the Panama Canal? That's a distraction. A distraction from what exactly is unclear; high grocery prices, other national security concerns, or perhaps an earlier government funding debate. 

Masked ICE agents deporting individuals in America to a Salvadoran concentration camp? Also a distraction, kind of. More that immigration is a policy Democrats are weak on so they should refocus on issues that they have firmer footing on; like health care or... 

Even the Epstein files were a distraction from the Trump administrations budget bill... until it wasn't the distraction but what Trump was trying to distract from. 

There are more than a few issues that Democrats have responded to with an almost reflexive "that's a distraction!" and this too is not effective messaging. First, if the "distraction" is an issue that voters actually do care about Democrats are signaling to those voters that the things that are important to them are silly and trivial. Even if the issue is truly unimportant, this tells voters that Democrats do not care about the issues that matter to them. Good luck getting those folks to listen to Democrats when it comes time to talk about issues not deemed a distraction.

Second, about the only thing Democrats can seem to agree on is that Trump is trying to distract voters. Democrats cannot agree what he is trying to distract from, necessarily, only that he is being distracting (which, fair). This reveals a party without an identity. Democrats are unsure of what issues they should talk about, but they know if Trump wants to talk about an issue then it is a strong issue for him and a weak issue for Democrats so they should avoid talking about it. 

Third, the Democratic party is a weak party. It is a weak party because it's leaders cannot determine issue priorities for the party and it is a weak party because it's members cannot effectively communicate to the public. By using the label of distraction as an eject button to get out of any conversation on issues they do not want to talk about Democrats are short-circuiting normal political discourse, and not in a good way. Normally when asked about a difficult issue a politician will either reframe the issue for a more positive perspective or pivot to another issue that is more favorable for them, continuing the dialogue. When politicians say an issue is a distraction it shuts down the conversation entirely. 

Democrats are either unable or unwilling to speak clearly, honestly, and with passion about the issues that they care about. Issues have to be polled and message tested before Democrats feel comfortable taking a position on anything. This leaves voters wondering what the Democratic party's position actually is, what individual Democratic politicians actually care about, and whether any of it is genuine. 

We are less than a year into Trump's second term and there are more controversies, scandals, and corruption to add to what was listed above. Trump proposed the US take control of Gaza, forcibly relocating Palestinians; Trump joined Israel in bombing Iran; Trump is bombing alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean without Congressional approval; Trump deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Memphis; Trump clawed back Congressionally approved funds; Trump accepted a Boeing 747-8 luxury jetliner from the Qatari government; and Trump launches World Liberty Financial, a crypto coin allowing for direct and anonymous payments to a sitting US President. Even still this is by no means an exhaustive list of all of the illegal, immoral, corrupt, and unconstitutional actions taken by this President, and still Democrats are unable to to identify one single issue to speak authentically on.

An illustration of just how deeply pathological this issue is for Democrats is the government shutdown. Credit should be given to Congressional Democrats for holding the line to shut a lawless government down. However, Democrats refused to support a funding bill over the narrowest of policy positions, making the Affordable Care Act subsidies permanent. By Democrats own reasoning, had Republicans agreed to extend ACA subsidies Democrats would have ostensibly voted to fund a government that just a few months before passed a budget bill that increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding to a levels above that of most other countries military budget when those very same agents are masked on American streets lawlessly disappearing individuals. Further, Democrats would have agreed to funding ACA extensions without any guarantees that Trump and Congressional Republicans would not use the recission process to claw back the funds for those subsidies like they did with foreign aid and Public Broadcasting over the summer. 

The reason Democrats picked health policy instead of picking a fight over the conduct of ICE officials or recission? Republicans are more trusted on immigration (R+9) and crime (R+17), budget policies (R+4) and economic (R+3), while Democrats are more trusted on health care policies (D+13).

The posture taken by Democrats on immigration, crime, the economy, and budget policies makes Republican dominance of these issues a self-fulfilling prophecy. Republicans, left to their own devices, are able to create and control the narratives around these issues. By not engaging, Democrats are not forcing Republicans to defend some truly unpopular positions taken by the Trump administration. 

It is true that the Biden administration's immigration and border polices were unpopular with Americans who believed that too many immigrants were coming into the country illegally and the conditions on the boarder were chaotic. At the same time American's do not support masked authorities disappearing individuals off American streets without due process. There is a wide policy gulf between these two policy approaches which Democrats could easily position themselves. In fact, this is what Democrats tried to do at the end of Biden's Presidency, but because Democrats rarely talked about boarder security it was seen by voters as a cynical political maneuver.  

It was also the case that though the macro-economic indicators at the end of Biden's term looked positive, inflation had hurt personal finances for a lot of people. Further many voters blamed the large spending bills passed by the Biden administration for fueling inflation and driving up federal deficits. The only significant piece of legislation passed so far by the Trump administration has been a budget and tax act which greatly increased spending while cutting taxes for the wealthy which will result in a significant increase in the federal deficit. On top of that, Trump has unilaterally, capriciously, and arbitrarily imposed wide ranging tariffs that have further exacerbated inflation and strained the economy leaving an opening for Democrats to attack Republicans on their management of the federal deficit and the economy. 

We can see the unpopularity of Trump's policies in the data. Nate Silver has tracked Trump's net issue approval rating and without strong counter messaging from the Democratic party Trump's policies have increasingly, and universally, become unpopular. 

If Democrats learned to effectively communicate Trump's issue approval rating, and overall approval rating, could fall farther. Democrats speaking with clarity and passion on issues might actually give them the credibility they so desperately need for voters to see them as trusted and competent leaders. But the popularity of any given policy or which party is trusted on an issue is really besides the point. The Democratic party first needs to decide what its values are and let the messaging follow, polling be damned. 

Elected Democratic officials act as if they are passive observers of politics with no agency. They look to polling to guide their policies and talking points as though public opinion is immutable. Democrats have the causal relationship here flipped, speaking out with moral clarity changes the public discourse and therefore the public's opinion on issues. 

The Media has Blind Spots, Not Biases

In July Congress passed a recission bill to claw back $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the organization that allocates funds to local National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Station affiliates. In many regions these are the last remaining media sources providing local news coverage as local media organizations have been decimated by changes to the media ecosystem, resulting in news deserts in much of the country. Both corporate consolidation of media companies and the disaggregation of sources for information with TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, and various other internet sites has put the national media environment in flux as well. Warner Brothers Discovery plans to spin off CNN and some of its other cable channels from its more profitable streaming business. 

The claw back of CPB funding is also only one instance in what has become a larger pattern of behavior in Trump's nascent second term. Earlier this year ABC settled a defamation lawsuit with President Trump for $15 million. The lawsuit stemmed from George Stephanopoulos colloquially describing then presidential candidate Trump as a rapist, when he was found civilly liable for sexual assault. CBS similarly settled a suit with President Trump for $16 million related to 60-Minutes editing of an interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris for a promotional ad, despite this being normal practice and her full response being aired during the program’s regular broadcast. The Trump administration has also said they would select the members of the press pool, a responsibility normally held by the White House Correspondents' Association. Further, the Associated Press has been removed from the press pool for their refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

While past Presidents have bristled at the coverage they’ve received from the media, the actions of the current administrations are without precedent. These actions are, however, the logical conclusion of  a decade of attacks against the media from Trump. Since he began his first campaign for president, Trump has called the media “fake news” and escalated his attacks from there. 

Said another way, Trump is accusing the media of being biased against him. Like so much with Trump, this criticism is not original to him. Since this isn’t exactly a new argument, media organizations have addressed these criticisms. However, I think there is a component of this discussion that is often overlooked, so lets start by understanding the disagreement as it currently stands. 

Critics of the media argue that there is a liberal group-think or monoculture at the elite levels of our society. This includes the executives of media organizations who then guide the editorial decisions in the country’s newsrooms. It also includes the professors and administrators at universities that are not only educating and training the next generation of journalists, but also where scientific and sociological experts are sourced for stories, independent scientific research is conducted, and lawyers and judges learn their trade. Depending the individual making the argument the reasons for this elite’s bias towards the Democratic party ranges from a deep belief in the project of neo-liberalism; to being a part of and beneficiary of Democratic governance; to the true bias being against Trump specifically from a uniparty. 

The response to these arguments range from satirical snark, as Stephen Colbert quipped at the 2006 correspondence dinner that “reality has a well-known liberal bias”, to the more earnest that point out all the ways in which the media strives to be fact-based and unbiased. News organizations will publish corrections or publicly retract stories when they get something wrong in an effort to maintain trust and credibility. Further, when reporting on a story media organizations will ensure that both sides of an issue are fairly represented. 

These retorts have not only not quieted the criticisms of bias that, if were honest, are coming largely from the political right, but invited criticisms from the political left; specifically in regards to the last defense. Media observers point out the reductiveness of this defense. Because our political system has been reduced to a two party system our media views all issues through a conservative/liberal lens. 

You would be hard pressed to find an issue with only two sides, which suggests that media organizations are regularly determining which issue positions are legitimate and which are illegitimate. It is perfectly appropriate for a news organization to use this sort of editorial discretion. However, if the mechanism to determine the legitimacy of those positions is the bifurcation of our political system this would be an abdication of that news organization’s responsibility as journalists. Further, other issue positions might warrant individual examination by a journalist so as to not normalize that position by contrasting it with past or current policies, or other mainstream issue positions. This is a nuanced position, which is why journalists should be professionals with a set of standards and ethics guiding these decisions. 

It is also worth considering the motivation behind the accusations of bias within the media. To some extent this is projection—every accusation is a confession. The political Right has cultivated and benefited from a Conservative media ecosystem. While there are a great many benefits in this media ecosystem it also has a weakness, illegitimacy that comes from partisan bias. One solution to this problem would be to be less partisanly biased, but this would diminish the partisan benefits. The other solution is to attack the rest of the media as having a liberal bias. There can be no fact-based critiques or corrections from other media organizations of Conservative media if those are simply partisan attacks. And if they are caught towing the party-line? It's all part of the business, all media organizations do it. At least that's what they would like you to believe. 

There is a deeper cynicism here though. First, the type of fair and balanced reporting demanded by Conservatives was once a regulatory requirement enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This was called the Fairness Doctrine and it mandated that broadcasters devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. It was Republican President Reagan's FCC repealed this doctrine in 1987 which lead to the rise of Conservative AM talk radio. Gone was the pretense of fairness on these Conservative talk radio shows. 

Almost a decade later Fox News would be created by Roger Ailes who worked in the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush White Houses. It was in the Nixon administration that Ailes authored a memo outlining his desire to create a Republican news network to "avoid the  censorship, the priorities, and the prejudices of network news selectors and disseminators." This leads into the second point; given Fox News' position within the broader media ecosystem they are able to lend credibility to Conservative talking points and policy priorities. In this way Fox is able to strongly influence the editorial decisions of the other news networks so those news networks do not appear biased by not covering the stories that Fox News is covering. However, there is an asymmetry here; Fox is not at all interested in taking their editorial cues from the other media organizations. Remember, they've already eroded the public trust in media so they do not need to be worried about appearing partisan or biased. 

What is unfortunately lost in this debate is that there is a bias in media, its just not a partisan bias. For this reason I will call it blind spots to avoid confusion, and because I do not believe it is necessarily willful or intentional. This is not a critique of how the media covers stories but rather what stories the media chooses to cover. 

Part of this is the direct result of the hollowing out of local news organizations. Often it was the beat reporters in the small towns across America that would do the investigative legwork that would uncover a story of national importance to be picked up and elevated by the national news networks. Without this infrastructure of local reporters it is harder for larger organizations to identify the important stories. It is more difficult to report on how national policy making is affecting individuals in small towns across the country. It is that much harder to know what are the important issues in these areas.  

In practice this means that when someone listens to NPR or picks up the New York Times they will hear or see stories from DC and New York and will hear about national policy or a humanitarian special interest story from a faraway country. What they wont find is stories about their community, or a community like theirs, or even about the issues their community faces. This results in a kind of disenfranchisement, disengagement, and resentment. These communities view the media as wholly out of touch with their reality and so what relevance does the media have to these communities? What legitimacy does the media have to say what the important issues of the day are? What credibility does the media have? 

Compounding this feeling of resentment are the (in)famous "diner stories". Every four years journalist from the large news organizations fan out across the country in search of "real America" only found in the diners in "middle America" or "fly over country"—already you may be picking up a hint of condescension in how we refer to these communities. The journalists come to observe these voters as if they are some foreign culture to be studied and reported back to civilization. They will claim that understanding which issues are important to these voters is essential to understanding the "mood of the nation". But as soon as the ballots are cast the reporters retreat back in their studios, betraying a deep insincerity in the interest in these communities. 

Rebuilding the network of local news organizations is the obvious solution to this issue. Joshua Darr wrote for FiveThirtyEight, "a growing body of research has found that government is worse off when local news suffers. In fact, inadequate local news has been linked to more corruption, less competitive elections, and weaker municipal finances and a prevalence of party-line politicians who don’t bring benefits back to their districts... in the absence of local news, people are more likely to vote for one party up and down the ballot”. Short of rebuilding a robust local news environment, which would be a years long project, the national organizations need to take seriously their credibility gap in "middle America". Resources need to be put into covering these communities consistently, not once every four years. 

The Culture Warriors Are Fighting the Wrong Battles

I recently started reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and I was struck by something in the very first chapter; a sense of shared identity.  Mr. Vonnegut begins this book by relaying a story of the time he and a friend visited Dresden after the war. There they befriended the cab driver who took them to the slaughterhouse Mr. Vonnegut and his friend were held at night as prisoners of war. The cabbie had also served in WWII, on the German side, and was also a prisoner of war. Though on opposite sides of the conflict and having lived half a world away these three men shared an experience that, 23 years later, brought them together. Later, describing the time he spent writing as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau Mr. Vonnegut writes, "the very toughest reporters and writers were women who had taken over the jobs of men who'd gone to war." 

"World War Two had certainly made everybody very tough," Mr. Vonnegut later concludes (emphasis my own). Mr. Vonnegut is writing anecdotally about post-war America which is an extreme case. At no other point in our history was the entire nation so mobilized towards a singular goal. Men were drafted; women stepped in to fill jobs at home to produce bullets, bombs, tanks, and planes; kids collected scrap metal; families rationed. The war was felt by everybody. An entire nation worked towards a singular goal, sacrificed to achieve it. 

In the decades that followed Americans would have a similar unifying struggle against Soviet ambitions. America and her allies airlifted supplies to West Berlin in one of the greatest logistical feats in history after the Soviets blockaded the city, only to see the Berlin Wall erected. Americans shared angst over Sputnik and gathered around their televisions with nervous excitement as Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface. Americans fought in the Korean and Vietnam wars. But Americans were not asked to sacrifice for these events. Not uniformly at least. The Berlin Blockade, Airlift, and Wall were events happening across the Atlantic. The space race was a competition between large government agencies. The Korean War was branded the "Forgotten War". Though a draft was enacted to fight the Vietnam War those with means fairly easily avoided being drafted. It was a war fought by the poor and disadvantaged Americans, and those who stayed home weren't asked to ration, collect scrap, or buy war bonds to support the war effort. 

Even in this time, however, America still has a shared sense of identity. Each town had it's selection of local papers delivered to each door every morning. Whether you wanted the community news, classifieds, sports, or funnies you had to flip through the other sections to get where you were going. You would see the news of the day. Whether you chose to engage with it or not was another matter, but at least you were aware. Radio stations were few and TV stations were fewer. If you weren't interested in watching the nightly news you likely caught the beginning or end of the program while sitting down to catch that evening's sitcom. Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America. 

 

This meant that everyone was listening to the same music, watching the same shows, seeing the same news. Now, in very many ways, this is a rose-tinted look back. What I am describing was controlled by and created for white, Christian, men. As I hope will become clear this is not a longing for this specific version of shared culture, more so a lamenting of the lack thereof (which I'll get into shortly). Furthermore, this is a literal whitewashing; entire economies existed to service the segments of society not catered to by this dominant mono-culture.

As those decades passed technology advanced, reshaping the media and cultural environment. With the growing popularity of FM radio and the Regan administration's rollback of the fairness doctrine, AM radio would become the domain of right-wing talk radio. Cable TV would give people 100 channels to choose from instead of 5. News would have its own, 24-hour, channels; music would have its own channel; history would have its own channel; and so on. TiVo and iTunes would make watching shows at their scheduled time or listening to the radio a thing of the past, but would quickly give way to streaming. The 90s Letterman vs Leno rivalry gave way to... silence. Citing decreased viewership and financial constraints CBS would be cancelling the Late Show in May 2026, the show once hosted by David Letterman.

Anymore the only shared cultural event that has to be viewed live is sports. While I don't know how this plays out, I think it is worth flagging that the rise of fantasy sports leagues and legalization of sports betting has diminished team fandom with people instead watching to see if they win their parlay or a player delivers on the fantasy projection. I think the jury is still out on whether this is good or bad in the context of shared culture.

This is all before considering the effect of social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok promised to bring people together, to create community, to be a virtual public square. What they have done through their algorithms is to provide endless personalized content that rarely has any connection to broader cultural trends, such as they are. If something does breakthrough it is fleeting, lasting a few weeks at most. What I see in my feed will be different from what you see in yours. 

This is a problem that will be amplified by AI. Content will be able to be generated in real time to cater to your preferences. Connection to reality, truth, or share experiences will be irrelevant, the only relevant question will be, "will this keep you engaged?"

 

At the same time, however, there has been some movement in the other direction. Walmart, Target, Amazon, Starbucks, McDonald's, Applebee's, and so many other chains like them have replaced the unique and distinct mom and pop shops and diners that used to populate every town. A corporate blandness and mediocrity that promises consistency whether you're walking into a store in New York City or Cleveland. To paraphrase Jon Lovett, Americans made a trade with these corporations, accepting uninteresting sameness for convenience and low prices. What we didn't account for was just how valuable the unique cultural oddities locally owned shops and restaurants are to their communities. 

 

In summary, we have exchanged what was a locally diverse and interesting nation that shared a common reality for a nationally uniform and uninteresting nation with no shared common reality. 

 

The Republican Party has many self-identified culture warriors. The current administration is filled with them. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is returning a Confederate statue to Arlington National Cemetery, renaming "woke" US Navy ships, and reverting the names of military bases to the names that had honored Confederate generals. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked visas of students that have expressed "pro-Palestinian views" and will review the social media of student visa applicants. 

 

Earlier this week the Department of Homeland Security pushed a recruitment ad reading "serve your country! Defend your culture! No undergraduate degree required!". 

In one sense I am a little confused but what is meant by "defend your culture". On the one hand, this is coming from the party of culture warriors, but they refuse to pass legislation regulating social media companies or AI; something that actually could, if done right, protect our culture. On the other, they have made it very clear (by their statements and actions) they mean white culture. 

You might think this is unfair, but the Vice President, JD Vance, is arguing that America isn't a nation founded on ideas. During a speech at the Claremont Institute on July 4th JD had the following to say (emphasis my own);

 

Every Western Society, as I stand here today, has significant demographic and cultural problems. There is something about Western liberalism that seems almost suicidal, or at least socially parasitic, that tends to feed off of a healthy host until there's nothing left. That's why the demographic trends across the West are so bad, why so many young people, historically high numbers in all European countries, say that they would not die for their own country, because something about the liberal project in 2025 is just broken....

 

But even so, if you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an American is, I hate to say it, very few of our leaders actually have a good answer. Is it purely agreement with the creedal principles of America? I know the Claremont Institute is dedicated to the founding vision of the United States of America. It's a beautiful and wonderful founding vision, but it's not enough by itself.

 

If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of independence, that's a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of foreign citizens who agree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Must we admit all of them tomorrow? If you follow that logic of America as a purely creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you. But at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people that the ADL (anti-defamation league) would label as domestic extremists. Even those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. And I happen to think that it's absurd, and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this, to saying, you don't belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025. I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don't belong. 

 

In this section of the speech JD is addressing the same lack of cultural cohesion, though he identifies different root causes; liberalism and immigration. Now it is worth taking this argument seriously because there are those who have arrived at this conclusion honestly. However, it is not worth taking JD seriously. This is a man who is serving as Vice President to a man he called "America's Hitler" and "cultural heroine". Furthermore, JD is standing up straw men arguments to easily knockdown to cosplay as an intellectual. 

 

No, I wont take JD seriously, but I will engage with the argument. It begins by saying a nation defined by an idea is too inclusive  and will change too rapidly, fragmenting it's culture. To that I would say, this has always been true of America. We were, in fact, a nation founded on ideals. A Frenchman could become an American in a way an American could never become a Frenchman. That was true at our founding and that is still true today. 

 

Further, there is a circular contradiction in this argument. If an immigrant believes in liberal self-governance they are culturally aligned with America, but in granting them citizenship it would fragment our culture so they shouldn't be granted citizenship. Not that anyone is seriously making the argument that every immigrant that believes in liberal self-governance should be made an American citizen, but that immigrant is more culturally aligned with America than a native born citizen making blood and soil arguments about nationality, for example. 

 

If there is a cultural through-line in America from our founding to today it is a culture of assimilation. It has not always been without its challenges; Irish immigrants, Chinese immigrant, German immigrants during WWI, Japanese immigrants during WWII, Central and South American Immigrants, Jews, Catholics, all faced various forms and degrees of xenophobia. The assimilation of these cultures, ethnicities, and religions has created a beautiful tapestry in this country with different musical styles, foods, and art. 

 

Lastly, what this argument does not consider or address is the fragmentation of information sources. The Trump administration has functionally halted all immigration to the country and our information sources are no better. He could be successful in deporting all non-citizens and it would not amend our information environment. He could remove all naturalized citizens and those that remain would still be in their information silos. 

 

I don't know what the solution to this is. To mix metaphors, we are so far down this road I'm not sure how we unring the bell. We are at a point in this country where we don't have a shared reality. Some would blame immigrants for diluting and fragmenting our culture. This is the tried and true tactic of othering individuals used by aspiring dictators. Reality has been so distorted that there are some that doubt whether the Holocaust occurred. I can't help but wonder if the loss of a generation so uniformly anchored in a single event has unmoored us. It seems that even shared experiences in which we were all asked to sacrifice like the COVID pandemic are quickly distorted through our fractured media environment.

Investigating the Narrative: How COVID-19 Saved Trump's Political Legacy

 Recently I wrote about how the 2024 election turned out to be a referendum election, with voters expressing a strong anti-incumbency sentiment directed against Democrats. Of particular salience to those voters was the economy. Although the rate of inflation had eased towards the end of the Biden Presidency and economic indicators were largely healthy, years of high inflation hurt personal finances. Voters did not believe Biden was doing enough to address high prices and so they turned their economic hope to Trump.

 Now that we are two and a half months into Trump's second term and Liberation Day has come and gone, eliminating trillions of dollars of wealth from the stock market in the process and sending the bond interest rate up as foreign investors pull their funds out of the dollar I thought a retrospective could be worthwhile. Not to the campaign; even though the tariffs ultimately imposed on Trump's Tariff Day were much more severe than he signaled during the campaign, anyone paying attention would have told you that Trump was committed to the policy of universal tariffs and it would be detrimental to the economy. 

Further, Trump's other policies, namely, mass deportations, would be a drag on the economy as well. Immigrants work jobs in America that Americans are unwilling to work and at rates that Americans would be unwilling to work for. Further, they are paying taxes into a system which they know they will not be the beneficiaries of and are consumers in our communities. To be clear, this is not an endorsement of our current system of immigration and the treatment of migrant labors in this country, but Trump's solution is not only inhumane, its economic self-harm. 

No, I do not want to look at what the campaign positions were because most Americans were not paying attention. They felt the impact of inflation and remembered back to the last time the economy was good, under Trump in his first term. Trump is more than willing to reinforce this belief, claiming the American economy was the best the world had ever seen before COVID, so lets take a look at a few of those claims. 

Staring with unemployment. Trump will claim that he is the reason for strong employment numbers from 2016 through to the beginning of 2020. To be sure, the unemployment rate was historically low, but looking at the unemployment rate since 2007 there is no clear indication of when Obama's presidency ended and Trump's began. In fact, the unemployment numbers continue on a steady trajectory that began under President Obama.

Next, looking at inflation. Trump has claimed that America has no inflation during his first term. While that is obviously false, inflation was within the traditional healthy band of 1% - 3% during his presidency. But this too was the range for much of the preceding eight years.

Lastly, looking at Gross Domestic Product. Not only will Trump brag about the number of jobs he created, but the economic growth the nation enjoyed during his first term. Again, Trump is not wrong, GDP growth was strong. Again, however, this was a clear continuation of a trend that began under the Obama administration.

Importantly, when examining these graphs, I have been omitting 2020; we see unemployment spike, GDP crater, and inflation start to rise in 2020 while Trump is still President. However, this was the direct result of the global shutdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A global pandemic is hardly the fault of Trump, and the response to the crisis from other foreign leaders was far outside his control. Though I think Trump is to blame for many mistakes he made during this period, a global economic crash is not one of those mistakes. So thought I think it is fair for Trump to claim that up-to 2019 he oversaw a strong economy, though one might channel President Obama and retort, "you didn't build that!"

Now, you may have noticed that I said "up-to 2019"; if we were to look closely at the GDP graph above we can see there is a slight dip in 2019 just before the pandemic lock downs took effect. So lets look into that dip and what caused it.

From his first term Trump is able to claim only a very few policy achievements; among them his tax cuts and tariffs against China. At the time I argued against both of these policies. Turning to the tax cuts first. Trump's tax cuts largely benefited the upper class, with some moderate cuts for the middle class and fewer for poor Americans. At the time the argument was that the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis overseen by the Obama administration was too slow and what was holding back the economy was high tax rates on corporations preventing them from investing in research & development, capital improvements, and their workers. 

There are a few problems with this line of argument though. First, part of the reason the recovery was slow was because Republicans in Congress insisted on austerity measures to cut government spending in order to get the federal deficit under control. Then President Obama argued that with historically low interest rates now was the time for the government to borrow money to kick start the American economy, any deficit spending would be paid back at a lower interest rate. Republicans rejected this form of direct government stimulus and instead, eight years later, would run a deficit when interest rates were higher to stimulate an economy that had largely recovered from the earlier financial crisis. 

Second, in the years leading up to the ratification of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) corporate cash on hand was increasing; a strong suggestion that high tax rates were not hobbling corporations' ability to generate cash which they could then invest in their businesses. 

Further, corporate merger and acquisition activity had been increasing leading up to 2016, again suggesting companies had no problems investing prior to the tax cuts.

These were the arguments I made before the TCJA was enacted. After ratification businesses took the additional profits from their reduced tax liability and repurchased their own shares at record levels. These stock buybacks do not benefit the workers of these companies or improve productivity and efficiency, they instead benefit the corporation's shareholders–importantly the executives who receive stock compensation. 

Now turning to tariffs on China. Trump's justification for placing tariffs on China was because they were manipulating their currency and had unfair labor practices which disadvantaged American companies and workers, resulting in a trade deficit. He had me until the trade deficit because, well, Trump does not actually understand trade deficits. An important piece of context; at the same time that Trump was railing against Chinese economic practices he torpedoed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which would have created an economic framework between the United States and 11 other nations–Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. This agreement in particular would have given President Trump significant leverage to negotiate different trade terms with China.

Furthermore, Trump pulled out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. We could have a debate on the merits of NAFTA, but what replaced it, the US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement was not wholly different from NAFTA meaning we strained our relationship with too of our closest trading partners to put back in place the same deal which existed before.

Trump expressed that his goal was to get China to change their trade practices and we have every reason to believe that was his intent. However, the better approach would have been to gather our allies in Europe and the Pacific and as an economic block impose tariffs on China. Instead Trump started a trade war with China that China was able to navigate around because we were acting alone. 

This sets the stage and lets us come back around to the dip seen in GDP in 2019. Looking at industrial production specifically we can see this drop off, well before COVID.

 And zooming in on 2019 we can more clearly see this decline.

What this graph shows is that the US manufacturing sector was in a recession 2019 and it was a direct result of Donald Trump's trade policies. While the TCJA may have delayed this recession, it was not enough to prevent it all together. 

At the same time US farmers were going bankrupt at the highest rate since the 2008 financial crisis. Again the TCJA was not sufficient to offset the losses due to the trade war with China and the Trump administration stepped in to provide additional relief in the highest level of subsidies to farmers in 14 years. This, again, was a direct result of Trump's economic polices. 

So where does this put us at the end of 2019; our manufacturing sector is already in a recession and farmers are going bankrupt at elevated levels, but before these weaknesses were able to spread throughout the economy, resulting in a general recession COVID-19 effectively shut down the global economy. As a result, the economic turbulence that followed was blamed on COVID and not Trump's policies. This allowed Trump to return, four years later, after inflationary pressures and pitch a return to the period of his economic prosperity. No one had realized that when we tried his economic policies the first time they had failed.